Going For It: The Partnership of Balance Between Right Brain and Left Brain in Writing

Among the professional creative writers I know, Tom Lazarus is probably the most prolific. We worked together on NBC’s Hunter, and I later worked for him on Freddie’s Nightmares. He worked on a broad range of other shows before and after that, as he continues to be a much sought-after screenwriting teacher at UCLA Extension’s Writer’s Program. 

From the beginning of my decades-long relationship with Tom, I was long struck by his ability to conceptualize, develop and execute on his writing projects with remarkable speed and impressive quality. This writing ranged from teleplays, screenplays, stage plays, novels and more (he also authored the book Secrets of Film Writing). His film Stigmata made number one in the box offices on its opening week. Tom is also a gifted and accomplished painter and maybe that’s one of the keys to understanding his prolific nature. When he and I talked about his writing process, he hinted at the idea of letting the right side of the brain take the lead, however, since I still had the left side judging filtering the information when it’s being heard, I wasn’t capable at the time of incorporating it right away. I had to challenge it and deliberate, take it to the committee inside my head.

Essentially the practice boils down to being reliably able to tap into the right side of the brain, the creative side. Too often writers allow the left side, the critical side, to enter into the equation much too early, as a creative concept is being developed. And too often this critical editing process hamstrings the nascent creative process. Too much judgment too early and too often in the creative cycle can, and almost certainly will, inhibit and smother the force of the vision. For a painter (my mother was an accomplished painter) it’s all about execution in the moment, delivering the inner vision, and that’s what Tom does so well with his writing. The great thing about writing now, of course, is that one can edit and change after the rough drafts, especially with so much writing being done on computers.

Long before I had learned this lesson, and I was struggling with editing and changing concepts as they were evolving, debating the merits of different elements, and getting sidetracked on different story and character possibilities, Tom was off and running like a stallion out on the range, riding free. I have since learned from his model and successfully adopted it. And in doing so, I find the left side judgmental process has woven into a more cooperative balance with my creative side. Instead of stopping or side tracking the process, it’s almost like an inner coach say ‘don’t forget this’… and ‘what about this.’ It’s like a partnership now. And I enjoy ‘the ride’ much more, without having the other critical and dominant voice inside my head challenging and blocking the creative force before it really has a chance to define itself. 

Want Versus Need: A Critical Distinction in Writing

Many years ago, as a young and aspiring screenwriter in Hollywood, and a newly minted member of the WGAw (Writers Guild of America West), I mustered the money together to attend WGA Writers Conference at the UCLA Conference Center up at Lake Arrowhead in California. I’d heard about the event for some time, and was excited to be going for the first time. I’d get to meet other writers in a beautiful setting, and hear some of the greats talk about their craft and tell their war stories. I heard plenty, but decades later, one memory stood out. And he shared a writing note that has defined an aspect of my writing ever since.

Waldo Miller Salt (October 18, 1914 – March 7, 1987) was an American screenwriter who won Academy Awards for Midnight Cowboy and Coming Home. He also wrote the screenplays for Serpico and Day of the Locusts. In his earlier years he was blacklisted during the Red Scare of the McCarthyism era. He’d experienced some of the intense highs and lows of what a life can offer, and he was sitting with us out on the grass, a bunch of young television and screenwriters, under the shade of a big oak tree, with a view of Lake Arrowhead. Idyllic. His manner was quiet, with a quality of humility, yet still a spark in his eye about that which is possible and yet to come.

He’d shared his process working through his screenplays with us and told anecdotes about working with big stars like Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino and Jane Fonda, as well as some of the sobering details of the McCarthy era. But he wrapped his talk up by calling our attention to something that he thought was most important for us to hear. He said that all the stories he’d just shared and the questions the different writers asked, were all very interesting, of course. They were the kind of things this audience of young writers wanted to hear, the entertaining stuff… But there was one thing that all the writers there needed to make sure they understood about the characters they wrote: the difference between what a character wants, and what a character needs.  

At the time, I had a pause processing this concept, because I originally viewed these motivational drives in a similar manner. But Mr. Salt took care to emphasize the critical distinction between the two, and with this difference was a crucial core to the driving structure, urgency and energy of any story. A character may want something ardently, and go to great lengths to get what they want, but what a character needs is something without which they cannot ultimately survive. And while a character may not know what they need, while they know what they want, it is this distinction that establishes a character and defines their arc in any story.

For me as a writer, this fundamental observation – delineating the difference between a character’s wants and needs – has become a foundational consideration in how I think about characters and develop my stories. I think it’s an invaluable life perspective as well.  

Fiction Versus Fictive: Keeping it Real in Writing

I’d first met Roy Huggins when he was producing The Rockford Files. It was a favor to my dad, who had gone to college with Roy. I’d written a spec script for Rockford, but the competition was stiff for and assignment with this popular NBC show, and it was not till years later that I actually got to work with him.

For a young writer in television, Roy Huggins was a legend. He created and produced The Fugitive, Maverick, and 77 Sunset Strip. He had co-created The Rockford Files with Stephen Cannell, and it was for Stephen J. Cannell Productions that I first came to work with Roy. His bright red hair had turned snow white in the meanwhile, and he was now the Executive Producer for NBC’s hit cop drama Hunter. I was fortunate to be writing one of the first episodes of the season two, and Roy took extra time with me, not just giving me notes on my script, but also going into great detail sharing some of his wisdom from his long tenure in the screenwriting trade. I recorded these notes on a series of audio cassettes, and still listen to them on occasion. There was one writing note he made in those meetings, however, that stood out as a defining point in refining my writing. There was a piece of action I had written in a chase scene to which he called special critical attention.  

At that time Cannell’s shows were well known for The A-Team and Hardcastle and McCormick, popular primetime series that had their share of action which stretched plausibility. Unconsciously following that mold, I’d written the Hunter action scene with moves that, while could have happened, simply did not make logical sense in the real world. And it was at this juncture that Roy spoke about the difference between ‘fictive’ versus ‘fiction’ in writing. He said while the preceding season of Hunter indeed had elements that were quite fictive, which were moments that were larger than life, meant to entertain, but in the final analysis did not feel real, the new Hunter was going for gritty realism. Under a different Executive Producer, the first season of Hunter was basically a ‘Crazy Guy of the Week’ story model, which Roy hated and was determined to change. He also talked about how in literature and quality film, it was those artists who were able to create something that felt real, were the ones who had achieved something of substance in their craft and in their careers. All the rest was something more like cartoons in his view, and not worthy of serious consideration.

In dialog, this sensibility also translated into avoiding those witty quips one might hear from the hero when they are under fire from the bad guys. This show strove to sweat the details of achieving what made a moment real and powerful, rather than a light fluffy distraction. I was thankful to have Roy’s tutorship at this time when the series was undergoing a fundamental philosophical and architectural change and to have the reasoning behind it narrated to me in an intimate one-one-one setting.